What to do About the Eight Million Tons Of Plastic Garbage Dumped in Oceans Every Year

The equivalent of five grocery bags full of plastic rubbish on every foot of every nation’s coastline around the globe is how much plastic debris is being dumped into the world’s oceans every year.

This figure comes from a new report estimating that a shocking 8 million metric tones of plastic pollution ends up in oceans each year – based on data from 192 coastal countries collected in 2010, writes The Huffington Post

Based on rising waste levels, the researchers now estimate that more than 9 million tons would end up in the oceans in 2015.

Experts have released many warnings in recent years that plastic pollution is killing huge numbers of seabirds, marine mammals, sea turtles and other creatures while aversely affecting the oceans ecosystems.

China was responsible for the most ocean plastic pollution per year with an estimated 2.4 million tons, totaling nearly 30 percent of the global production.

This figure was followed by Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Egypt, Malaysia, Nigeria and Bangladesh.

The United States was the only wealthy industrialized nation in the top 20, at No. 20.

What can we do about it? This. So fund this and we might live a bit longer.

19-year-old Boyan Slat has unveiled plans to create an Ocean Cleanup Array that could remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic waste from the world's oceans. The device consists of an anchored network of floating booms and processing platforms that could be dispatched to garbage patches around the world. Instead of moving through the ocean, the array would span the radius of a garbage patch, acting as a giant funnel. The angle of the booms would force plastic in the direction of the platforms, where it would be separated from plankton, filtered and stored for recycling.